Google Play Services Update to Improve Android Security

Android has had a lot of issues with malware and security threads, because it’s an open operating system and the apps on Play Store aren’t manually verified. While this might not be a big issues for savvy users, a part of regular users get fooled into installing malicious apps that steal private information.

Thanks to an upcoming Google Play Services update, all apps will be checked continuously in the background. Until now apps where automatically verified once they were uploaded or updated on the Play Store, but they are only compared for malicious code, which can’t be found every time.

The new Google Play Services update will check the apps in background and scan everything they do in order to find out what the app is doing. We don’t think it’s going to be a fool-proof method, but it will surely increase the Android security, while keeping the environment as open as before.

Android has had a built-in app verification feature since version 4.2, but it only runs when an app is installed. You can find it at Settings > Security, it’s called Verify apps. But a malicious app could look legit when first scanned and there’s no way of finding out without scanning it’s activity continously.

According to Google, the update will roll out in the following weeks and it’s available for every device running Android 2.3 or higher.

We’re glad to see that Google is able to fix this issue without making developers’ lives harder by manually verifying apps. This is one of the reasons developers love Android, but it also makes malware makers love it even more.

We will let you know once the update starts rolling out, because it will probably deliver silently, as that’s how the Google Play Services updates itself.